Casualty Notification
by SeaSpectre160
Summary: How do you tell some you've known since she was three that her only family is never coming home? Twelfth in 'Long Way Home'


**Well, here's the latest addition to the 'Long Way Home' series! The last two chapters of 'Dear Lisa' will be up tomorrow and Friday, and then you won't be hearing anything from me until the 26th at the earliest - I'm taking a TESL course that will be ending on the 25th, unless I get a burst of inspiration for something really short and quick that I can post that evening after class.**

 **DISCLAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow.**

 **WORD COUNT: 3261**

* * *

 _Thursday, May 26th, 2016_

Mick Rory had learned many things in his career as a criminal and as a temporal bounty hunter. How to steal, how to capture, how to kill.

How to tell someone he'd known since she was three years old that her big brother and protector was dead was not one of them.

So he hadn't gone straight to Coast City, where he knew Lisa was laying low, when Rip had dumped them in 2016 before trying to go it alone. When their survivor's-guilt-wallowing captain returned to them and led them to victory against Savage, however, Mick figured he'd at least try. At least the job he and Leonard had signed onto was finally complete. He could say it hadn't been for nothing.

Of course, he was still left wondering how to go about it. After Rip made them the offer to continue protecting time with him, they'd all split off to their respective rooms to think over their decisions. Mick was torn. On the one hand, he didn't think he could go back to his old life as if nothing had happened (his earlier try had failed spectacularly). On the other hand, he had unfinished business here.

Frustrated, he left his room and started to make his way to Rip's office, intending to help himself to another drink, only to find the captain already there, and already nursing a tumbler of scotch. In the middle of a deep, long sip, he tilted his head to the table with the bottle and additional glasses. Mick took the silent invitation and poured himself one.

"I'm surprised you haven't already left," Rip commented.

"You think I'd say no to your offer so quick?"

"Not so quickly, no, and that is if you were to turn me down, which I am not entirely certain of."

Mick sighed. "Yeah, me neither. Just need more time to think."

"Of course. But what I was referring to was the fact that your partner's younger sister is out there, with no one to inform her of her brother's…" He trailed off, either unwilling to finish the sentence or unsure how to.

"That her criminal big brother died a hero?" Mick snorted. "Truth is, I don't know if that's going to make the news better or worse. You know how we are – were – about heroes. Lisa's no different."

"Perhaps… emphasising _who_ he gave his life for might help. She had to have already known the sort of lengths he would go to in order to protect the people he cared about, as opposed to dying simply for an ideal."

Mick grunted in agreement. Lisa's world would be rocked enough already. At least that was something consistent between the Leonard Snart Lisa already knew and the new man he'd become through this whole trip. Something that hadn't changed. But it still didn't help him much. "Have you ever done this?" he asked.

"Done what?"

"Told people their loved ones were dead?"

Rip looked down into his glass. "You know that all the Time Masters are orphans, taken out of history. That marriage and having children was discouraged. The closest thing most of them had to friends and family were their fellow Time Masters. And with the policy of interfering as little as possible with the timeline, giving condolences to the loved ones of the… unfortunate casualties caught in the crossfire, the ones who are deemed inconsequential to the timeline, simply didn't happen."

"So that's a no."

The Time Captain took another deep sip. "I'm sorry I couldn't be of assistance."

* * *

 _Sunday, May 29th, 2016_

"Thanks for letting me come, Mick."

Mick glanced over at Sara, who was sitting in the passenger seat of the pickup fabricated by the Waverider, and nodded. She'd met him at the rarely-used 'garage', clutching a small, black leather book that Mick had found in Snart's room, and asked if she could go visit Lisa with him. After their conversation the night after Leonard's death, there was no way he was going to say no. Snart would've wanted the two most important woman in his life to meet. And maybe this would help Sara get some closure. Hell, maybe it would help _him_ do the same. Even frying Savage had done nothing to fill the emptiness in his chest. "Figured you had just as much right to come. Lisa should be able to meet everyone who was important to him."

He pulled the truck up to a small apartment building, located in a low-rent, but semi-respectable, residential area of Coast City. It was one of many safe houses Snart had scattered across the West Coast, each one either bought or rented under false names and automatically paid for by large accounts into which Snart always added to with every payout. He got out, and led Sara to an apartment on the top floor, furthest away from the stairs and elevator. Mick knew, having hidden out there at one point, that there was a fire escape through which one could easily descend or climb up to the roof, from which there was only a short jump to the roof of the building next door and its own fire escape. It was one of Snart's many rules: always have more than one escape route.

Mick stopped in front of the door. This thin slab of wood was all that stood between Lisa and the news that would destroy her world. He raised his fist and knocked on the door once, twice. No footsteps could be heard behind it, but Mick could hear the peephole cover opening as Lisa checked to see who was there (damn Snarts and their ability to walk creepily quietly). Then there was the audible clicking of the extra locks, and then the door swung open to reveal a very pissed-off Lisa Snart.

"Hey."

Before he even knew what was happening, she reared back and slapped him across the face. "You bastard!" she growled, "You ditch us at the racetrack when we need you the most, then you and Lenny just disappear on me for _months_ , without so much as a single text, and now you have the- the- the _gall_ to just show up and say 'Hey' like none of that ever happened?!"

She's absolutely right. Snart had been _pissed_ about that when he'd found Mick a week and a half after breaking out of prison.

 _"Where the_ _ **hell**_ _were you?" his partner growled, his stare angrier than Mick had ever seen him, yet still colder than the gun that was primed and pointed right between the pyro's eyes._

 _Mick swallowed. He'd seen the news on TV, but it'd only said that Lewis was dead and Leonard had been arrested for it. He'd known his old friend would find him sooner or later after breaking out of prison, and that he'd want answers. "I bolted when things started going crazy. Thought you and Lisa were right behind me."_

 _"Well, you thought wrong. I got hit from behind, we both did. I woke up in the back of a van, and Lisa woke up_ _ **alone**_ _, with no idea our own father had put a_ _ **bomb**_ _inside her neck. I had to rely on_ _ **the Flash**_ _, of all people, to save her! Because_ _ **you**_ _couldn't be bothered to look over your shoulder on your way out!"_

"I'm sorry."

Lisa blinked. She'd probably been planning to yell at him some more, but like he'd told Rip lifetimes ago, he didn't _do_ sorry. And she knew it. The sound of that word coming out of his mouth had stunned her into silence. Her eyes then darted to Sara, only just now paying attention to the unknown factor.

'Sloppy,' he can almost _hear_ her brother saying.

"Who's this?"

"Sara Lance," the ex-assassin introduces herself quietly, "I'm a friend of Mick and Leonard's."

Lisa's eyes snapped back to Mick, as if to check. He nodded. "Are we gonna just stand out here all day?" he mumbled. Lisa stared at him for another second, like she was starting to clue in that something was wrong, and stepped back to let them in. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sara taking in the appearance of the apartment. It was a small, one-bedroom place, with minimal furniture (a pull-out sofa bed dragged in off the curb, a patched armchair, a coffee table currently covered with Lisa's fashion magazines, a tiny kitchen table covered with three different takeout boxes, and three folding chairs – though only one was unfolded while the others were tucked away in the corner). The bedroom door was shut, and so was the bathroom door. It was nothing fancy, but it was enough to lay low in.

"What happened?" Lisa asked as soon as she had the door shut and relocked. "Where's Lenny?"

Mick swallowed, _still_ not sure exactly how to phrase it.

"Maybe you should sit down," Sara suggested softly. That didn't seem to help, instead freaking Lisa out even more.

"No," she whispered, obviously having figured it out, "No, no, he can't be…"

"I'm sorry, Lisa," Mick whispered, "He's not coming back."

 _"No!"_ Lisa's knees seemed to give out, forcing Mick to catch her as she dropped towards the floor. He half-led, half-dragged her to the couch and sat down with her. But instead of crying into his shoulder, like he'd been expecting (and like Sara had done a few nights ago), she kept her composure. "How?" she demanded, sniffing only slightly, "What happened to Lenny?!"

Mick took a deep breath. "This guy interrupted our heist at the Bullion Exchange and offered us a job. He's a career time-traveller, if you can believe that, and wanted help offing a dangerous immortal guy."

Lisa stared at him. "Uh… okay… if our city wasn't crawling with metahumans, I'd think you'd completely lost it."

Sara and Mick shared a look. It _was_ more than a little unbelievable. "We thought we'd get all kinds of chances to steal in days before DNA and fingerprinting, so we said yes. Then Savage – our target – killed one of the other guys on the job, and you know how your brother gets when someone hurts a member of his crew. He wanted Savage's head on a platter, so we stayed on. But Savage… had more help than we thought."

Sara picked up from there. "His allies had a device that controlled time, and they used it to influence events to make them go his way. Including events we took part in. When we found out, we knew we needed to destroy it, or we'd never escape their control. Unfortunately, there was a failsafe."

"A piece of the machine that had to be held in place _by hand_ in order for the thing to self-destruct," Mick continued to explain, "I was almost the one to do it; I had a personal beef with those bastards by then, and I wanted to be the one to take them out. But Lenny wouldn't leave me behind. He knocked me on the head… and he took my place."

He waited for that to sink in. For Lisa to understand that Leonard's death was, in part, his fault (he wasn't going to say the Time Bastards had no fault in it, after all).

But she turned to Sara instead. "And how does this have anything to do with _you_?" she asked harshly, "Why did you come all this way with Mick, just to talk to me?"

Sara looked down, playing with the ring Mick had given to her. The one Snart would have wanted her to have. "Leonard… He became one of my closest friends on the mission. He talked about you a lot. Said more than once that he'd like us to meet."

"It was more than that," Mick insisted. Sara shot him a look, but he kept going. Lisa had the right to know. "You know you two would've been more than just friends if you'd had more time." He nodded down at her hands. "I wouldn't have given you that ring if I wasn't sure of that."

Lisa's eyes immediately snapped down to the ring. "You gave her-" She seemed to be at a loss for words, then she looked back at Mick. "That's- That was Lenny's! You have no right to give anything of his away!" She stood up angrily. Mick tried to reach out to her, but she jerked away. "Don't, Mick, just- Just… I need some space, okay?" And with one last glare at Sara, she ran back into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Muffled sobs soon followed, and Mick knew she'd deny it later – Snarts never admitted to their hurts out loud.

"That could have gone better," he muttered, glancing at Sara.

The blonde gave him a bitter smile. "Exactly how can delivering that sort of news ever go _well_?"

* * *

 _Monday, May 30th, 2016_

Lisa woke up to the sound and smell of frying bacon. It was the only thing Mick could be trusted to cook without burning the kitchen down. It wasn't that he couldn't make anything else, but bacon was some kind of sacred food that even he wouldn't dare burn. It took a second for her to remember why Mick was there, then it hit her full-force.

Lenny was dead.

Lenny was _dead_.

She buried her face back in her pillow, where she had cried herself to sleep the night before. It had been a fight just keeping her tears back in front of Mick and the blonde chick he _brought into their safe house_. If Lenny knew…

Except Mick said Lenny liked her. That they could have been… more than friends, if he hadn't died. Lisa hadn't known Lenny to be that openly interested in anyone, so if Mick had noticed something going on between them…

Well, if this girl really was something to Lenny, then Lisa could begin to forgive Mick for bringing her here.

She slowly opened the door, poking her head out of the door to see Mick at the stove with his back to her. The sofa bed was pulled out, extra blankets were draped over the armchair, and the blonde – Lisa forgot her name – was nowhere to be seen.

"Grab a plate if you want some. You're low on groceries, so Sara took the truck to pick some up. I can call her if you want anything specific."

Lisa didn't expect him to notice her entrance into the main room. He normally wasn't that observant, especially when he was focused on something else.

Now that she thought about it, Mick was different, too, or maybe he was just off because of what happened to Lenny. He'd been quiet and sad ever since he'd gotten here.

The clicking of the knob as Mick turned the stove off brought her out of her thoughts. Moving on autopilot, she went and got two plates out of the cupboard. When the two of them were seated, Lisa got the courage to speak up again. "So… why didn't you and Lenny call me before you went on that job? Or even just text me? Lenny never goes… never went out of town without letting me know."

"Hunter – the time-traveller – promised he'd bring us back to the exact same time we left. We figured we'd be gone for barely a second. But that was back in January, and he instead returned us in May, barely a week ago. We were all pissed; aside from the fact that everyone else had people who were missing them, Sara came home to find out her big sister had been killed while we gone."

Lisa stared at him, stunned. "And Mr. Time-Traveler couldn't drop her off earlier with a warning so she could stop it?!"

"Time wants to happen," Mick said solemnly, saying like it was a motto or catchphrase, "If Sara had been there that night, she would've been killed alongside her sister, and without the knowledge that Sara was alive out there somewhere, their father would go and try to avenge them both, which would also get him killed." He sighed. "Even with time-travel, you can't fix everything. There was no way to save Laurel; if Sara had tried one thing, something else would have happened to kill her. That's what we mean when we say time wants to happen. Keeping Sara out of there was the only way to save her and her dad, so Hunter just chose the option that resulted in the lowest number of deaths."

Lisa was quiet at that. She had no idea that Sara had gone through the same thing she was.

* * *

Sara watched as Lisa slung the stuffed backpack that contained all her personal possessions into the backseat of the truck. They were heading back to Central City. Sara had already called her mom to let her know she'd be staying in town for a while; her father wasn't the only one who needed time away from Star City.

She was tired. The stress of learning of Laurel's death mere hours after losing Leonard had resulted in many sleepless nights. She'd spent the past night curled up in the safe house's armchair, actively fighting sleep. It was one thing to have a nightmare and wake up to find out that a friend had seen her, but she didn't want to wake Lisa with her screams.

Mick and Lisa were talking by the truck, and Sara saw him hand the other woman something. The black leather journal they'd found in his room. Sara hadn't read through it, but had added her own entry at the end, back when she hadn't known whether or not she'd be able to meet Lisa in person.

Lisa nodded, looking a bit teary-eyed, and clutched the journal to her chest, before getting into the back of the truck. Sara was still hesitant to get in, not looking forward to the awkwardness that would be riding back to Central with the grieving sister of her dead friend-slash-almost-boyfriend, who hadn't seemed to take their relationship-that-could-have-been well. She knew Leonard had been Lisa's only real family after their grandfather died, and from what little he'd told her during their card games, his past relationships had lacked somewhat in commitment or thinking about the future. So the fact that he'd been thinking about their future meant a lot. She didn't know how Lisa would have reacted to someone new coming into their life full time.

The sound of a horn honking brought Sara back to the present. Mick had already started the truck and was waiting for her. Shaking it off, she climbed into the passenger seat and buckled up.

"You okay?" Mick asked, looking at her with concern.

She sighed. "I will be."

THE END

* * *

 **So yeah, this was a bit depressing to write.**

 **It occurred to me that it's a good thing Rip didn't drop the team back in January, because I distinctly recall Chronos showing up right after they left. When watching the episode back before the Mick=Chronos reveal, you'd think he just showed up late to capture them before they left, but maybe he was trying to catch them after they got back.**

 **Oh, and yes, Gideon can make cars. Where do you think Rip and Mick got their ambulance in 'Last Refuge'?**


End file.
